The Hodge Conjecture
by cancerous cactus
Summary: Liza completed her life's work. She was planning on dying happily, she's done what she needed to do. And yet, she wakes up as a distraught Uchiha Sasuke.
1. Chapter 1

**AN:** here's this, the next chapter can be expected around... next month? anyway if y'all have any suggestions send them my way. _trip, a guide,_ and possibly another story will be coming out soon so stay tuned my dudes.

words: 2102

* * *

Bright, white walls, the constant beeping of a heart monitor, certainly something she was used to after spending months upon months wasting away in a hospital room. The tick tock of the clock and a dull thudding in her body echoed by the beep of a heart monitor is a symphony Liza could conduct blindfolded. She wonders if today is the day her parents will finally cut the life support off, and frankly, despite her renowned mathematics, she's still surprised that they've kept her around this long. They never had much use for children other than to keep up the happy, healthy family image that gets the conservative voters on their side. Liza's completed her life's work, she can rest easy and die happy, and perhaps that's the reason they keep her alive, out of spite for her success. It wouldn't shock her.

She gazes out the window, expecting the roar of the city and the flowers from her fellow peers at MIT that have taken residency on her windowsill, despite the trickling amount of visits she gets from them now-a-days. Except there's no flowers, and that definitely isn't a modern city bustling beneath what appears to be only the third floor. She's pretty sure she was on the fifth floor. Last she checked, she was in Massachusetts and in no way near what seems to be... a Mt. Rushmore knock off? Those heads definitely aren't the heads of past American Presidents, nor does that stone look like the stone she's only seen in pictures. So yeah, maybe she isn't the best person to identify Mt. Rushmore but, well, she's 100% sure she's not in Massachusetts anymore. Maybe she's been Life Flighted somewhere and she doesn't remember? But that's impossible, she's pretty sure hospitals work with a whole "consent" thing.

Or maybe it's not impossible. She knows nothing about laws and all that jazz.

The door slides open and she turns a slightly panicked gaze to the very pretty nurse (maybe if she wasn't paralyzed from the waist down with an unidentifiable disease slowly, but surely killing her, she'd tap that).

"Uchiha-san? How are you feeling?" The nurse asks, picking up a chart hanging by the door. Awkwardly, Liza glances around the small hospital room, subtly trying to find someone who could possibly be 'Uchiha-san' in her room.

There's no one else.

"Uchiha-san?" The nurse asks again.

Oh shit. She's definitely talking to her.

Liza clears her throat and turns the front half of her body, and wow, that's a lot easier than before. What kind of super drug are they giving her? "Well enough, I suppose." She answers and what the fuck happened to her nice voice? She sounds like a two year old. She turns a surprised gaze to her own hands. That's certainly fucking new, she thinks, her hands are like, half the size they were yesterday. She lifts the blanket curiously and shifts her legs hesitantly.

They respond, doing exactly what she wanted them to do.

"You're very advanced for your age, Uch-"

She cuts the nurse lady off with an undignified shriek. Not only can she move the lower half of her body, but she is also feeling something between her legs that definitely wasn't there before. She struggles to keep down tears of joy (her legs respond) and turns a tearful gaze to the nurse lady who's looking at her with a pitying gaze. "What did you say my name was again?" She asks, and struggles to keep her voice even.

"Uchiha Sasuke."

Everything clicks into place and yeah, no, that outside is not a Mt. Rushmore knock off. That's the Hokage whatever the fuck. She only had the vaguest knowledge of Naruto due to her nerdy best friend but like, what the fuck. She's pretty sure Sasuke wasn't supposed to a have a genius mathematician stuck in his head. Or maybe she's just a figment of Sasuke's imagination that came to life and took over his body, a byproduct of the mental torture she's beginning to vaguely recall.

"Do you remember what happened?" Nurse lady asks, casting a concerned gaze to her head.

"Uh, yeah, um, Itachi right?" She (he now? What the fuck that's not important right now.) guesses haphazardly, thinking back to Sara's constant rantings (the blessings of a near photographic memory). The nurse nods and places a glowing hand to her forehead, checking for something probably, but it doesn't appear she finds anything unusual. Nurse lady smiles and steps away, heading towards the door.

"I'll give you some room to process what happened, Uchiha-san." And with that she leaves.

And process, she does. On shaky legs, grasping the bed rails in a white knuckled grip, she stands, wobbling like it's her first time walking and well, it's been years. She steps forward and stumbles towards the door. Poking her head out, she sees a man with a frightening mask and an absurd amount of armour guarding her door.

ANBU, her mind supplies and that certainly wasn't something she knew (food for thought, at a later date). She nods respectfully at the soldier, just like her parents taught her because soldiers are soldiers no matter where you go. The ANBU points her back into her room with what she's sure is supposed to be a compelling look (the mask kind of gets in the way). She sulks back into her room and tests the window. It opens. Bless. She guesses there's about a ten to fifteen foot drop. Statistically, there's about a sixty-ish percent chance she'll survive this. For normal humans, not for ninja children in training. Not to mention the magic glowing healing she remembers from the few episodes she watched. This probably raises her chance of not dying.

She finally has the means to escape the hospital once and for all with her (Sasuke's?) legs working. _Might as well take them for a trial run_ , she thinks with a face splitting grin, and the window opens wider. Carefully, she sticks one leg out, straddling the windowsill. As if in slow motion, the door begins to slide open, and she pulls her other leg over the windowsill, and pushes off, free-falling and for a few precious seconds she's never felt freer.

Just as quick as it started it ends, she's held out the hospital window by her hospital gown, her junk splaying for everyone to see beneath her and the only shame she feels is the shame of getting caught in something you weren't supposed to be doing. She's been caught with her hand in the metaphorical cookie jar.

Liza is quickly pulled back through the window and unceremoniously dumped right back on her hospital bed. The same ANBU man from outside is staring her down, next to an old man Liza vaguely recognizes as the Third Hokage. The odd, barely tangible, but still there memories confirm it with a whispered Sandaime. "Hokage-sama?" She ventures quietly, and she wonders if he knows Danzo ordered the massacre of Sasuke's family (this was a rant she was familiar with. The Uchiha Massacre was a point of contention with Sara).

"Sasuke-kun." The man acknowledges with a dip of his head, his voice grandfatherly and calm in a way that soothes her. He certainly doesn't sound like a man who just lost an entire clan, but not everyone cares as much as she's probably going to have to.

"Did you need something?" She asks when the man doesn't continue. The corner of his lips quirk up and the ANBU next to him tenses visibly at her disrespect. Frankly, at the moment she couldn't give a flying fuck about some old coot's feelings.

"I just came to give you well wishes Sasuke-kun."

"Great." She spits, the pity making her pride rear it's ugly head, and crawls off the bed, making her way to the window, "I'm sure your well wishes will make it all better, sir." The ANBU grabs her again and places her back on her bed, his grip a little tighter and his body more tense. Her lips quirk up- she's angered ANBU-san.

"Anything else, Hokage-sama?" She asks exasperated, "I want to go and…" she trails off, feeling tears prickle at the back of her eyes, this boy lost everyone in his family in one night. Funerals. Right. She'll have to look into Uchiha burial rituals. "The bodies?" She asks finally, turning her gaze back to the military dictator. "What did you do with the bodies?" She asks again at his silence.

"Taken care of." He answers sadly. It's probably fake.

"Taken care of how?" She demands leaning forward.

"Burned, as per Uchiha tradition."

"Oh." She breathes out and relaxes, "Okay. Do you know when I'll be released Hokage-sama?" She asks quietly and settles back into the bed.

He smiles again, "If what the nurses told me is true, you should be released by tomorrow."

"Thank you, Hokage-sama."

* * *

True to the Sandaime's word, she's released the next morning. The ANBU who walks her home is different from yesterday, and he (she assumes it's a he) stands outside her home, acting as a visual guard to ward off her traitorous brother. She doesn't think the ANBU has eaten yet, as she hasn't eaten yet and the man has been standing out her door for quite a long time. She taps on the window behind the ANBU, trying and failing to get his attention. Frustrated, Liza tears off her hospital clothes (it's not like she had anyone to give her new fresh clothes from home) and throws off what she assumes to be Sasuke's pajama shirt that was lying on the floor of his room. The shirt swallows her whole and acts a dress of sorts, covering her completely.

Liza stalks into the kitchen, heading determinedly to the fridge, praying for some of the leftovers that her memories hint at. They hadn't finished their meal from the night before the massacre. She grimaces at the morbid thought and pops some kind of noodle dish into the microwave and nukes it, praying it won't explode and cause another huge mess. It thankfully warms nicely, without any explosions and she separates the meal into two plates she had a somewhat difficult time finding (the memories are oddly vague in some areas as she had discovered during her night in the hospital). Liza eats quickly and finds that whatever the noodle dish is, it's really good. Dragging the other plate out, she places the other plate outside on the porch next to the ANBU. He doesn't even deign to look at her. Bastard.

"For you, ANBU-san." Liza says, then adds solemnly, "This is the last meal my mama made, so enjoy it."

She turns to face the house. _First thing's first_ , she grins, _washing the hospital off my body._

* * *

The traditional bathroom is steamy, and the heat digs up the mirror so that Liza can only see the a vague outline of the body she's now occupying. It's small and muscular and definitively… male. She touches her face, feeling the smooth, pale skin underneath her fingers. It definitely feels real, and she briefly mourns the loss of her generous curves she had before she became ill (she had died skinny and malnourished, many pounds beneath where a thirty-two year old woman should be) but she can't say that if she could go back, she would. It didn't have to do anything with sentiment, as she didn't have any for this world (yet) but more so that she isn't sure if she can go through the experience of being so ill her body feels more like a cage than anything belonging to her.

 _Besides_ , she thinks glancing at her small package and snorting, _I never believed in genders anyway._

* * *

It's only after he examines the last of the houses in the Uchiha compound and he's brushing his teeth, ready to hop in bed, does he notice.

His _hair_.

He grabs some scissors and a kunai he found in the weapons room.

The hair has to go.

As the dark hair falls onto the bathroom floor, he's reminded of Mikoto cutting Sasuke's hair in this… style. He sucks in a breath and pushes down the sorrow he feels for a mother he never had. Now, it's buzzed and cut as close to his scalp as he could without cutting himself. Sasuke thinks he did pretty damn well.

He's pleased to note that when he goes back into the kitchen after tidying up his room, there's an extra plate in the sink and a note on the fridge that reads "Thanks for the food."


	2. Chapter 2

**AN:** i, personally, _hate_ this chapter, which is a large part of why i've _refused_ to post it. it's very ugly which makes it hard to edit, not that i actually edit any of my works, but it's the thought that counts and this barely had half a thought. enjoy, i guess.

words: 1284

* * *

He gasps, memories of a _deaddying_ mother chasing him into awareness. He glances at the clock— 3:47 AM. His first day back to the Academy starts in about five hours. Experience from the past week lets him know he won't be falling asleep anytime soon (his sleep schedule is completely fucked to hell and back). With an agitated sigh, he roughly shoves himself into an old, beat up Uchiha Romper™ and stretches. This body reacts beautifully, and the pull of the muscles is comforting in a way he wouldn't have appreciated before Liza's disease left her paralyzed and slowly dying. He glances through cracked doors at cardboard boxes filled to the brim with jewelry and Uchiha marked clothing; they sit innocently in the tea room, a constant reminder of his newfound responsibilities as the only loyal and living Uchiha in Konoha. Hesitantly, he tears his gaze away and forces down what might be some grief, and passes through the kitchen, gulping down a glass of water and placing it in the sink. The sealed door just right of the kitchen, Itachi's room, as he had learned, taunts him, reminding him of his attempt to rummage through it only for him to step in and be assaulted by a barrage of both good and bad memories with such a force it caused him to pass out. Sasuke ended up waking up at 1 AM the next day with a crick in his neck and a sore tailbone.

The choice afterwards had been one of the easiest decisions he had ever made since Liza had entered adulthood: that he would not be opening those doors again, come hell or high water.

He pulls on his sandals and does his laps around the compound (he doesn't feel familiar with the rest of Konoha to run through the village, Liza had an astonishing ability to get lost in her own small apartment complex. He doesn't want to risk it), feeling the ache in his legs and reveling in the comforting burn. By the time Sasuke runs this risk of being late to the Academy, he's lapped the small compound 121 times. _Two more than yesterday,_ he notes proudly (ninja bodies are amazing).

Sasuke snatches a banana from the kitchen and somewhat aggressively takes a bite of the hell fruit. He's had bananas everyday for breakfast for a week and he's losing both his stock and general enjoyment of the fruit. Hopefully after he manages to rent out the houses, he'll have time to bake, but for now, he eats bananas. Trying to get houses rent ready while directing teams of Genin that are scared shitless of the supposedly "haunted" compound and pitying Jonin instructors is much more time consuming than he had initially assumed (the Sandaime had made it sound _much_ easier when they had briefly gone over it). But Sasuke has never been someone to do well with free time, in Liza's case, excess free time and long bouts of inactivity was something she considered to be torturous. Her mind could offer small bouts of entertainment and daydreams, but after a while the boredom turned towards emotional introspection, something she avidly avoided. Her apathetic nature had held up under both intense stress and family deaths, but for some reason never her own desire to understand exactly _how_ she had functioned as Liza.

* * *

Stepping onto Academy grounds was a lot less melodramatic than he had originally anticipated. No sudden flares of memories or rush of emotions as he examines the kids and adults milling about the yard. There are, of course, a mirage of stares, some piercing, but most pitying and caught in the odd place of _should I help or not_. Sasuke really hopes they choose the _or not_ option because the weird shit he gets up to at home when he's bored with sorting and meal prep really can't be explained in a reasonable manner.

It's fairly easy to ignore them, however, and he just lets his feet guide him to the right classroom. A loud screeching blonde stands in the middle of the classroom, yelling at a boy with a dog in his hair and Sasuke doesn't need Original Sasuke's memories to know that the kid is Naruto. Both Liza's best friend and brother had pictures of his face plastered on their walls, and that particular shade of blonde isn't a shade he's seen anywhere else. Sasuke has nothing against changing a plot he doesn't even know all that well, but honestly, the kid's voice is just a tad bit _too_ obnoxious in a way that grates on his ears in the worst kind of way. For now, unless Naruto suddenly goes mute or his voice suddenly changes from the screeching gates of hell to something a little less migraine inducing, Sasuke will stay the fuck out of Naruto's way.

The Academy is high school level academics (it seems you are expected to know upon entering in the school basic writing and arithmetic, which is probably a reason why most of the clanless children and orphans struggle so much in the courses) with an emphasis on strategy and a glorified Boy Scouts course, with an addition of taijutsu and a weapons class. In all honestly, he's surprised that anyone manages to pass the classes, but all the kids that are here are smart in a way that hadn't been necessary for survival in Liza's world. There isn't much emphasis on literature or mathematics, but more so history (extremely obvious propaganda) and the basics you would need to know in order to successfully pass as an average civilian in other countries. Sasuke, unsurprisingly does well with the academics side, he's got the brain of a genius mathematician famed for proving the Hodge Conjecture, a problem that many had tried their hands at, and only she got.

So yeah, academics, easy. But, if Sasuke was to be honest, Taijutsu is his favorite class. The rush of adrenalin and movement makes his blood _sing_ in ways he's never felt before. However, as much as he loves taijutsu— Sasuke is absolute _ass_ at it. He's not very good at dodging and his form is so terrible it makes his teachers cringe, no doubt wondering how he got so _bad_ all of a sudden. If Sasuke were to guess why he was so bad at it, he'd say that the main reason is the speed that Sasuke moves at, Liza had never had to process motion that fast before, and it shows in his confusion and inability to process the things around him while he's moving so quickly. The running certainly helps train his mind— but he's found he has to start slow and work his way up to his top speed in order to comprehend what's going on around him.

There was also the hesitation on socking another eight year old kid in the face, but that problem was quickly solved when they proved to be stronger than her by a wide margin. Plus all of them, minus maybe the utterly _adorable_ Hinata (that reminds him strongly of Liza's little brother), are asshats. All of them. Annoying as fuck.


End file.
